José Barrias

José Barrias was born in 1944 in Lisbon, and from 1950 to 1967 he lived in Porto where he briefly attended the School of Fine Arts of Porto. He lived in Paris from 1967 to 1968 and settled permanently in Milan in 1968, where he currently lives and works. His complex work is organized into open thematic nuclei, which are related to each other like chapters of a book that is revealed through the images the artist produces. Working with different media – painting, drawing, sculpture, found objects, photography, written text, film – these are often combined in the same work, especially in the form of installations that occupy and adjust themselves to the exhibition space. Despite the variety of his work, most of his pieces have in common the fact that they are developed from a text, a story or an event in the artist’s life, and explore the concepts of trace and memory.